"All students are required to pay into a student fee system, and Students for Life wanted to access some of those fees to bring in Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., to speak on campus about her experience with the civil rights movement and her pro-life story," Dalton details.

Students for Life thought it would be a great opportunity for students at Georgia Tech to hear King's perspective, but the student government disagreed.

"When they heard about Alveda King's religious viewpoints and her pro-life viewpoints, they said, 'We don't want that on our campus; we're not going to fund it,'" the ADF attorney relays.

But as he points out, universities cannot treat student groups differently simply for holding a conservative or pro-life belief.

"All viewpoints should have equal access of the marketplace of ideas at public universities," Dalton submits. "Whether we agree with that viewpoint or not, that's the ideal public universities should be upholding, [and] unfortunately, Georgia Tech failed to do that."

Dalton

OneNewsNow sought comment from Georgia Tech and was told it does not comment on pending litigation. "Georgia Tech holds freedom of expression as an essential cornerstone to the advancement of knowledge," a university spokesperson added.

"Every university out there is going to say that they value free speech and free experience, but the fact of the matter is a lot of their policies don't match with that profession," responds Dalton. "They preach tolerance, but in many cases, just like we saw here with Students for Life, discrimination against conservatives and other minority viewpoints occurs on campus, and it's because they have failed to implement policies that they should have."

This is not the first time Georgia Tech has been sued. A similar funding issue compelled students to sue 12 years ago. Dalton reports that part of the lawsuit got kicked out of federal court on a technicality. The judge in that case, however, said Georgia Tech was not taking this seriously and warned that the school would probably be sued again.

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